Moral Realism

@igm,

...temporally speaking I can only think of construction and deconstruction of systems...evolution that is !

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Quote:

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. (Albert Einstein)

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. (Albert Einstein)

Quote:

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)

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@Fil Albuquerque,

One thing I can say about Einstein. Unlike Paul and his emphasis on the virtue of faith (over good works), Albert never suggested that it is virtuous to BELIEVE in E=MC2.

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@JLNobody,

...well he did made a pretty convincing case for it in the old days...are you suggesting he was a squitzo ? Laughing

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

Quote:
A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. (Albert Einstein)

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. (Albert Einstein, 1954)
I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. (Albert Einstein)

Quote:
A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)

That's my kind of vision! Buddhists call it 'Dependent Origination'. Wherever you look in what ever way you examine what appears due to the causes and conditions present will be perfectly as it should be at any scale from any direction and with any instrument or sense base. Nothing is random all is interconnected but to totally remove the mystery of its deepest secrets… this always lies just outside of the realm of inductive and deductive human examination and in the realm of intuition. I’d say.

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@igm,

Quote:

This scenario (logically possible scenario) has a person who feels pain (mild) all the time

This still doesn't make sense. Define pain as something else other than "feels bad". You can't do it in non moral terms. FA has tried and look how much sense those definitions have made. So how can a person who feels pain all the time, not be aware of how bad it feels? Even if we grant that a person is in a constant state of "pain" (experiencing it without the feeling of badness) this does not entail that this person can not feel different degrees of pain at all. If I lit them on fire I can guarantee you that state would feel worse then the state they are in, and such a state would be described as bad. So your thought experiment fails even before it has started. My comments speak to this already but you've completely ignored them. That is not good argumentation.

Quote:

You can’t say it is immoral to have a tooth ache or for someone else to have one.

First, this is a straw man. I havn't said anything normatively speaking about particular cases of pain. All I have said is that if pain has intrinsic dis value, it gives us objection reasons for normative ethics. Because you disvalue pain for what it is, you cannot simply dis regard it in others. That is because pain itself has intrinsic dis value.

Second, you having a tooth ache has dis value. That pain could in principle motivate others to help you alleviate it, if avoding pain is a normative goal.

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@bigstew,

I have a toothache right now. I've had it for about four days. It sounds weird, I know, but instead of taking aspirin I use it to study. I used to do this with panic attacks from hyperventilation. I just realize the pain (or anxiety) and how, instead of seeing it as something separate from and "happening to 'me'", it IS Me. Tat tvam asi.
Can this USE of pain redefine (this) pain as good because it is functional, rather than bad because it is dysfunctional?

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@bigstew,

I don't agree but I won't re-explain I'll leave it there.

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@bigstew,

...the question you should be wondering is what pain would mean without a contextual background...you cannot just grab an ensemble and say you guys are wrong because pain does exists as pain and it is bad...it is a circular argument...you rather ought to understand and see how and why it does...on your account of things everything which does exist does exist but you failed to disprove that whatever exists exists with extrinsic value...on very easy terms is like saying a video-clip is a video-clip in itself without willingly acknowledging the music and the image in it...

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@JLNobody,

...well it can, it very much depends on how you operate through and on it...

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@JLNobody,

First, you can desire pain to achieve other ends e.g. study, but that doesn't mean the toothache itself is only of instrumental value. Your initial thought of asprin shows that the toothache itself is worthy of being alleviated (it hurts, it feels bad). You instead using it to study (instrumental value) shouldn't be confused with the dis value pain itself has. A boxer, for example, might use the pain of being hit as motivation to win a bout, but that doesn't mean the pain of being hit is only of instrumental value. If there were no boxing match and he/she got hit, the pain itself would still hold intrinsic disvalue. Think about injury as well. We might think sporting achievements are worthwhile goals even to the extent that suffering some pain is desireable, but not to the extent that someone gets seriously hurt. Our goals/desires have to take into account the intrinsic dis value of pain.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

the question you should be wondering is what pain would mean without a contextual background...you cannot just grab an ensemble and say you guys are wrong because pain does exists as pain and it is bad

You obviously havn't been reading my posts carefully. I have said a number of times that pain holds intrinsic dis value, that it iself is worthy of being avoided. Normatively speaking, that doesn't entail all pain ought to be avoided. Though pain holds dis value, it can be worthwhile to suffer through pain at times, but this depends on our normative goals. Even so, if pain holds intrinsic dis value, the important point is that the pain of others cannot be simply disregarded. It has to be taken into account and justifiably allowed to pass.

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@bigstew,

...you did n´t reply at all at what I said...I was empathizing that pain is an combined effect necessarily requiring contrast in order to be established.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

...you did n´t reply at all at what I said...I was empathizing that pain is an combined effect necessarily requiring contrast in order to be established.

I agree!

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@igm,

...actually who really was paying attention to what I have written so far can remember that I engaged the matter on two different levels a consequential on one side and say a " decompiling" approach on the other...one must bare in mind that the signal of pain is informative, thus it requires a background to establish itself or to inform pain...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

...actually who really was paying attention to what I have written so far can remember that I engaged the matter on two different levels a consequential on one side and say a " decompiling" approach on the other...one must bare in mind that the signal of pain is informative, thus it requires a background to establish itself or to inform pain...

Yep, still agreeing!

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This subject is a minefield! BigStew you might want to read this:

http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Rabinowicz-A-Distinction-in-Value-Intrinsic-and-For-Its-Own-Sake.pdf

For others, unless you're really into this subject I wouldn't recommend it for general consumption!

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@igm,

I briefly read through it, and it looks like they are arguing that there are reasons for believing in the existence of irreducible final but non-intrinsic values, but I see no where where they claim that intrinsic values do not exist, whatsoever. I'll read it more carefully when I have the time as it brings up a few points that I am interested in i.e value pluralism, conceiving independent/dependent properties, a priori reasoning.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

...you did n´t reply at all at what I said...I was empathizing that pain is an combined effect necessarily requiring contrast in order to be established.

You mean "emphasizing" not empathizing.

" A combined effect necessarily requiring contrast" is not a very good definition of pain. When people hear "unmarried male" they think "bachelor". When I hear "an combined effect necessarily requiring contrast" I have no clue what you are talking about.

1 Reply

@bigstew,

" combined effect´" imply s a non linear extrinsic relational bound in between causes in the emergence of pain which generate an association in an effect, in the case pain is an informative value, not painful in itself, dependent on contrast and background...it presupposes a subject receptor which must itself not be pain in order to be informed of a pain value which then together generates "working" pain...pain is not for itself or in itself !!!
...let me just ad if you don´t have anything else to properly counter, then cheap peaking on my informal yet accurate presentation is rather pointless, I suggest you move on...everybody else in so far probably understood better what I said then the reasons you claim to have for intrinsic value in pain, which to me is just a true labyrinth of confusion...

(appreciate your input on emphasising, a gross mistake while correcting the writing due to quickly reading the dictionary options ending up making the wrong underlined choice)

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